‘You, unless I can prevent it.’
The ventouses, the suction cups, were of plain glass and red hot, and each time one was applied, Henri Doucette shrilled and wept like a baby. Flat on his stomach in the dressing-room without a stitch to cover him, he clenched his still-taped fists as the boils burst, and so much for the Gestapo of the rue Lauriston and one of its key members.
‘I’m saving you from agony, Henri,’ said the Surete. ‘One day you’ll thank me. We can’t have you ill when we need you.’
There was another in a very tender place and this the surgeon had left to the last.
‘Hold him, Hermann. Take him by the wrists. You, the ankles, Herr Engelmann. It’s all in a detective’s work.’
The scream filled the room and brought the latest pigeon to gape in panic from the doorway. She was all dressed up in plunging green velvet and emeralds to match her wounded eyes and breasts.
‘Petit, I’m here,’ she said. ‘Cheri, don’t cry. It’s for the best and when we’re alone, your Nathalie will comfort you.’
‘Piss off, Putain! Can’t you see I’m busy?’
She leapt and turned away in tears. ‘You’re always saying things like that. A whore … I love you, Henri. I want you!’
‘We’re finished! It’s over. Over, do you understand? Slash your wrists if you must but don’t come crying to me if you mess up! Make a good job of it this time. Complet, eh? Fini and au revoir.’
Nana Theleme took charge, urging the girl to leave. ‘Give him time. They won’t be long.’
‘He means it,’ the poor thing wept. ‘He’s been so cruel to me. Always it is like I am a dog at his feet!’
‘Then why not give him up?’
The sea green eyes that were so large and innocent blinked their tears away with candour. ‘I have to eat. I have to have a place to stay. He buys me things and yes, I love him. I like it. Can you understand that? I can’t.’ She shrugged her slender shoulders. ‘I’ve tried but always the inner self, it fails to answer me except with temptation.’
There were stares from the others in the gym, looks that were not nice. The SS who had brought the teenagers still hung around, spoiling for a fight.
‘Sit down. Here, have a cigarette.’
‘I’ve plenty. Let me give you one.’
Her fingers shook. Grabbing the hand, Nana steadied it. ‘Inhale. Fill your lungs. Count to ten and then exhale.’
Calmed a little, the girl sat back on the bench but shrank into herself. ‘I hate this place. Every time I come here I feel as if they are going to rape me. All of them and all at once in the ring. I want that too, don’t you understand? Secretly I’m so afraid of it and this … why this gives me great pleasure.’
‘Relax. They’re nothing.’
‘You were at the party. You were the one who came to sing.’
Though the eyes were dark brown, the left one was cloudy, and when Doucette looked directly at a person, it was not quite on a level with the right eye, but tilted up a little.
‘What do you want with me?’
He had never liked the police but was from Belleville. ‘A few questions. Nothing difficult,’ said the Surete.
The Spade threw the visitor from Berlin a questioning look only to see that one nod curtly in agreement.
‘What about you putting me down like that, eh? Why should I do anything to help you?’
‘Ah! easy, Henri. Easy,’ soothed St-Cyr. ‘Forget it, mon ami. Be magnanimous. Everyone will know it wasn’t fair. They’ll say I tricked you. It’s me they’ll blame, not yourself.’
Again the visitor nodded.
‘Okay. Shoot. Let’s have it.’
‘Bon. Take us back to last Thursday, the fourteenth. You and your wife went to Tours.’
‘She’s not my wife. I disowned the slut the day I used her father’s whip on her, since he wasn’t man enough to do it. She’d been running away from me all the time. Weeks, months … She deserved it.’
‘But you’re her conductor now?’
Again he looked to Herr Max for guidance. ‘Okay, so I took her to Tours. It was all laid on. She was to bump into the Gypsy. Perhaps he was suspicious, perhaps not, who’s to say? She was to call in on a regular basis. She was to tell me everything he planned and did, and who he met, but she’s buggered off with him and I haven’t heard from her since Monday when she called in to warn us of the robbery at the Ritz.’
Hermann was translating for Herr Max. ‘But is she with him now?’ asked St-Cyr.
Dumbfounded, Doucette threw Engelmann another look, and wiping sweat from his chest, asked, ‘With who the hell else could she hide?’
‘That’s what we want to know.’
‘Then think again, cow. Her family’s gone. She has no one else she can trust, no friends, eh? She knows no one and yet she still evades us? How can this be?’
The Gestapo and the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston had people out looking for her, then. A city-wide search in addition to that of the police and the Wehrmacht. ‘You do the thinking, Henri. You took her to a party on the eleventh. She danced.’
‘That one was there.’ He pointed to the door beyond which were the gym and Nana Theleme. ‘You brought her here. Why did you bring her?’
Nervous now, Doucette used both hands to grip the towel that was draped over his shoulders. He was sitting on the edge of the table, dangling his feet into space, and looked evasively down at his boots.
‘Why did we bring her, Henri?’ said Louis. ‘You tell us. I think you’d better.’
‘Her … her bonne a tout faire was …’ He threw Max a tortured look.
Engelmann understood enough of what had gone on to help him out. ‘On 15 December last, her maid of all work was arrested. It was nothing. A week in the women’s cells of the Sante.’
The Sante … Paris’s largest and most overcrowded prison. Population 12,000 normally but now about 18,500, since it varied from day to day and there was always a desperate need for space.
‘She wept most of the time,’ said Doucette. ‘The others had to beat her to shut her up. Two of them fell in love with her and wouldn’t leave her alone except to fight over her.’
Ah merde … ‘And what, please, did this girl tell your ex-wife a month ago?’
‘That her mistress was mixed up in something and that she was afraid she had been arrested because of it.’
‘Henri knows a lot about you,’ confided Nathalie. ‘There are things he hasn’t told that one in there from Berlin, things he is keeping quiet even from his friends at the rue Lauriston.’
Sitting before Nana Theleme on the bench, the girl in green velvet paused. The noises of the gym grew. The skippings, the punchings …
‘What things?’ asked Nana warily.
‘Things a petite oiseau told him. Well, actually, it was a mouton.’
‘Tell me, damn you!’
The girl looked up. Her cleavage dropped to reveal bruises, scratches and bite marks. ‘Tshaya. The one he … Well, you know,’ she shrugged.
‘Am I the reason she was invited to that disgusting party?’
‘She was the reason you were invited.’
Nana Theleme looked away in despair. ‘Tshaya can’t know anything!’
‘She does.’
The dark eyes leapt with fierceness. ‘Such as?’
‘A prospector.’
‘Ah no …’
No, mademoiselle? Despair now, was that it, eh? and Henri knowing secrets which must not be revealed to anyone. ‘You made several visits to the prospector’s house in Tours. He wrote letters to you. He had something he wanted you to do for him.’
‘Tshaya can’t have met him recently. She can’t! Not in years.’
Sweat poured from the pugilistes in the ring. A nose was bloodied. A tooth was spat …